Bracing for whatever Mother Nature sends our way!

Communications Director

Kristin Farley
[email protected]
(865) 215-2589

400 Main St., Room 691
Knoxville, TN 37902

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Bracing for whatever Mother Nature sends our way!

Posted: 02/16/2015
The City's Public Service Department crews worked hard all day Sunday, spreading 33,000 gallons of brine onto all Level I and II streets and most Level III neighborhood streets.

City officials met at 7:30 a.m. this morning to strategize and finetune their storm management plans.

Twenty-one trucks are now being loaded with rock salt and dispatched to staging areas throughout the city.

"We're staging, and we're waiting," Public Service Director David Brace said this morning. "When it starts precipitating, we'll put down a layer of rock salt and evaluate. We've got a Snow Plan, and we're following it."

Click here to read the city's Snow Plan.

City's Snow PlanWith temperatures staying below freezing through Friday, and more snow and ice possible throughout the week, Brace said it's especially critical to adhere to the Snow Plan.

"We have to manage our resources wisely," he said. "The decision whether to apply salt at the neighborhood level is heavily dependent on resources as well as the forecast."

The priorities are the high-volume traffic arteries and the streets that carry traffic to hospitals. Brace says the City has a full supply of salt right now, but each round of treatment of Level I and II streets requires more than 300 tons of salt -- and a week-long cold spell requires a lot more salt than, say, a one-time treatment before temperatures rise well above freezing.

"The important thing is to stay off the roads when they're icy," Brace cautioned.

Ice also can inflict havoc on trees and limbs, which in turn can fall and snap power lines. The City's Urban Forester has been involved in the storm planning, and tree-cutting crews will be working throughout the day and overnight.